Hold Steady keeps enriching its barroom rock 'n' roll

Six songs into its set at Omaha, Nebraska's, The Waiting Room, The Hold Steady introduced "Teeth Dream," a new song frontman Craig Finn says is about "when you have a dream and see other people's teeth in it."

Eight songs later came "Look Alive," a thundering, heavy tune about some sad Minneapolis cowboys and the West — "that's the first time we've played that for anyone," Finn says.

Song number 17 was "Wait Awhile." "I know 'Wait Awhile' doesn't sound like a kick-ass rock title," Finn says, introducing what would turn out to be one of his "advice" songs, where he counsels a girl to wait before diving into a relationship while the guitars roar around him.

The Hold Steady has been busy writing songs, and the band has used some short tour runs to test the new tunes.

"I really like playing new songs on the road," Finn says in a phone interview. "Sometimes a song sounds great in the rehearsal room, then you get it out live and it doesn't work right. You can feel the energy a little better when you play live.

"When you're playing live, you might say that second verse needs to be changed or maybe that bridge doesn't go on long enough, something you wouldn't know in rehearsal. Probably the best thing is you put the [new] song between two songs we've been playing for five years and see if it's up to the level of those songs."

At the Omaha show "Look Alive," came between the anthemic "Stuck Between Stations" and "Sequestered in Memphis," two of the songs The Hold Steady has to play every show. "Look Alive" held up just fine, musically and lyrically.

The new songs likely will be released in early in 2013. But why is the group touring in the middle of getting songs together and recorded?

"The economics of it kind of determines that in some way," Finn says. "Where we make our money is going on the road. We've never had six months to make a record."

Longtime Hold Steady followers will hear one significant difference in the new songs. There are no keyboards. Guitarist Steve Selvidge joined the band in 2010 after keyboardist Franz Nicolay left.

Selvidge gives the group three guitars, with Finn and Tad Kubler — well, sort of, according to Finn.

"I'm not sure you should really count me," he says. "Tad and Steve on the lead guitar playing off each other has become the key sound of the band. We've been doing this long enough that it's settled in live. Writing, it's still coming together."

Kubler brings the basic instrumental outline for Hold Steady songs to the band. The group then works at turning that structure into a song to which Finn fits lyrics he's already written.

"I try to write a few stanzas, at least four stanzas of lyrics a day," Finn says. "I'll flip through my book or my papers and say 'This one has the right feel and the right meter for this.' And the meter can be changed. A lot of the times, I'm changing lyrics up to the minute the tape rolls."

There's also a lyrical shift in the new songs, but it's not as obvious as the musical change.

"I wouldn't say a major difference," Finn says. "But every year I get more interested in writing about adults rather than kids. It's kind of been the trajectory all along of The Hold Steady. As a 40-year-old guy, I'm more interested in writing about adult things now than teenage stuff. When you look at Springsteen, Dylan or Neil Young, that's what they've done."

The Omaha show was early in a short summer tour, and more new songs have been added to sets since then.

Most of the set, though, continues to be made up of Hold Steady favorites, dating back to 2003 when Finn and Kubler, who had been in a Minneapolis-based band called Lifter Puller, formed the Hold Steady and released the group's debut CD, "Almost Killed Me."

The group played "The Swish" from that debut album during its Omaha set, but a good part of the set featured songs from the most recent Hold Steady CD, 2010's "Heaven Is Whenever."

In all, The Hold Steady, which relocated to Brooklyn early in its career, has released five studio CDs of anthemic, barroom rock 'n' roll that draw on the Replacements, Springsteen and other classic influences.

But one thing that raises The Hold Steady above is its intelligence and wit.

The Omaha set paired "Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night" with "Stuck Between Stations," proving that Finn is among the most literary of lyricists — the first song name drops poets William Butler Yeats and William Blake, the latter opens with a reference to Sal Paradise, the central character in Jack Kerouac's "On The Road."

Finn, though, retains a blue-collar, barroom-worthy work ethic, taking little time away from music. Last spring, he released a solo CD, "Clear Heart Full Eyes," and toured the country with a band he put together to play those songs. He took all of a week off before going back to work with The Hold Steady.

"It's sort of like, for me, a self-esteem thing," Finn says of his constant work. "I feel lucky to be doing music as a job. I feel like if I stopped being able to do it, it would be my fault. So you keep working and keep control in some way. If you do something you love, it's not like punching a clock or pulling a lever in a factory."

Finn plans to be doing the job he loves for years to come.

"My parents grew up with rock 'n' roll," Finn says. "It's not new anymore. I expect that if I'm 70 and I can make anything good, other 70 year olds will want to hear it and, if you keep it reasonable, like not starting at 12:30 [a.m.], you can get them out to the show."